By Ian Welsh, ianwelsh.net
{With original threads, and comments by members of Links for Wildly Left}
2011 DECEMBER 12
Seriously, listening to all the progressives either supporting the payroll tax rebate extension (an attack on Social Security) or saying that Cameron should have signed on to a forced austerity pact, I am reminded how mind numbingly stupid and partisan these people are. Scum. Evil. Stupid. I could have a small amount of respect for them if they were getting millions in order to sell out the people they say they care about, but many of them do it for free and the most of the rest do it for peanuts.
There is not an institution in existence, of any importance, which will not have to be torn down. Unions, corporations, schools, the UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO, they all have to go. All of them.
The oligarchs have made peaceful change impossible and the people have refused to take the few chances they had (many European countries had far left parties. Why weren’t they voted for?)
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A tiny elite living lavishly off the backs of the greater population has been the norm of human political economy since the development of agriculture. The brief window following WWII where a viable middle class existed was a historical aberration rather than the shape of things to come.
What we’ve been seeing since the 1980s is a reversion to the mean as elites take back what has always been theirs.—Curmudgeon
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There will be war, there will be revolution. And there will be Terror. Hundreds of millions will die.
We had our chances. I spent 15 years of my life trying to explain how to save the old system, how to make it work. Others have spent decades. We failed. The oligarchs and the people, at every step, refused to do what was necessary. At every step small minded greed and selfishness won.
So it was.
Unwilling to give up anything to make our civilization actually work, many will now lose everything.
So shall it be.
We shall reap as we have sowed, and we shall know ourselves by our fruits.
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- guest PERMALINK
December 12, 2011
One little reported fact (conspiracy of silence) about the payroll tax extension is that Obama is going to “pay” for it with an additional 3 year freeze on civil servant pay (on top of his previous 2 or 3 year freeze that was a unilateral offering, not even asked for by republicans). So this “stimulus” just robs middle to lower middle class peter to pay everyone else. No net stimulus at all. Just teaching the working classes to cannibalize each other. Another crack to stick their crowbar in when next year they will decide social security is going bankrupt faster than predicted and more austerity is needed. Plus government employees, the last holdout of lower to middle class job and income security gets another leg kicked out from under it. All because it is unthinkable to tax the rich and powerful on all that money they just have sitting around. I hope it dies. I hope Obama dies. I hope Reid dies. I hope all the democratic sellout bastards die. But I hope in vain. Besides, even if they did die, there are a hundred more standing behind them to fill their places. - Badtux PERMALINK
December 12, 2011
My best guess of the body count is that over a billion will die, because the majority of the population of the planet is not food-sufficient even *with* industrial agriculture going full tilt, and once industrial agriculture collapses in the midst of the turmoil of revolution and social disintegration… well. Actually, now that I think about it, the fate of most Romans at the end of the Empire is probably going to be ours — it’s estimated that up to half of the population of the Empire ended up dead in its collapse, due to starvation, war, and disease (all of which go together since hungry people wage war for what food remains and war destroys things like water systems, sewers, and clean warm homes that prevent diseases).
What strikes me most about our oligarchs is how *stupid* they are. A century of inbreeding and wealth primarily passed from parents to children through multiple generations has resulted in an oligarch class that, with a few notable exceptions (most of whom are first-generation oligarchs) are about as bright as a box of walnuts. They don’t see that their path is a path to self-destruction. Even if they are successful via repression in maintaining their wealth, the end result of that is Vladimir Putin — i.e., the tools of repression they used to retain their wealth turn upon the masters and dispose of them the way that Putin and his ex-KGB secret policemen have disposed of a goodly percentage of the Russian oligarchs. That is the fate of oligarchs who rely on repression to keep those grubby peasants from getting their hands on oligarch’s money… sooner or later, the goons with guns look around and say, “whoa, as well as shooting peasants, why don’t we just shoot the oligarchs too and take their place?” I.e., it’s suicide for the oligarchical class. But our oligarchs are so stupid that this is the road they’re going down? The stupidity, it hurts, it hurts! (Literally, shortly).
– BT - Curmudgeon PERMALINK
December 12, 2011
I think you’re being too optimistic.
A tiny elite living lavishly off the backs of the greater population has been the norm of human political economy since the development of agriculture. The brief window following WWII where a viable middle class existed was a historical aberration rather than the shape of things to come.
What we’ve been seeing since the 1980s is a reversion to the mean as elites take back what has always been theirs.
There will be violence in the future, but it won’t accomplish anything for the peasant classes any more than the anti-mechanization protests of the industrial revolution prevented manual labor from being taken over by machines. There is no up from here for anyone in the western world who wasn’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Whether there’s more ‘up’ for people in the developing world is something I’m not sure about. A middle-class interregnum may be an unavoidable phase in economic development but I am sure that developing world elites will do their best to keep any such phase to its absolute minimum length. - John Sears PERMALINK
December 12, 2011
Don’t forget the Republicans are using the payroll tax cut in the House as a means to ‘force’ Obama to do all sorts of heinously evil things he already wants to do, like delay EPA regulations to save lives from industrial pollution or rush an enormous leaky tar sands pipeline through some of the most sensitive aquifers in all of North America: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us/politics/house-republicans-unveil-plan-to-extend-payroll-tax-cut.html?_r=1
Sure, Obama’s threatening to stand up to them. How many promises like that has he broken already this year? My guess: the House measure passes the Senate with minor changes, Obama signs it ‘reluctantly’, then Dems and their sycophantic lobby groups run against it next year to present an alleged contrast with the evil Republicans. Good Progressives will fall in line; they always do, in the end. Brother. - Roman Berry PERMALINK
December 12, 2011
One point of disagreement: The people supporting the attack on Social Security’s finances (AKA the extension of the “temporary” reduction in the payroll tax) and lambasting Cameron for not signing on to a pact that effectively makes banks/rentiers superior to the sovereign and the citizens are not “progressives” (whatever “progressive” is supposed to mean), they’re partisan Democrats who stand for nothing at all other than pushing the policies and edicts of the party and its elites. They are in fact often ignorant of anything to do with an issue and can’t be bothered to look past whatever the talking points of the day are. And yeah, often they are fundamentally not too bright, because bright people don’t mindlessly repeat talking points, they investigate for themselves.
Evil? Maybe. I don’t think that if they are that it is on purpose. I think the evil is just a byproduct of their mindlessness. And it isn’t just on austerity, it’s on practically everything. There seems to be no issue for which steadfast opposition was of paramount importance during the previous admin that they do not stand ready to support the very things they once opposed. And they make the same excuses. Mindless. Dumb. - guest PERMALINK
December 12, 2011
You’re right about that, Roman Berry. Even this plan B nonsense is just galling. As if stabbing the prochoice voters in the back and gaining zero votes for every 100 that is lost makes any sense at all. From that to watching all the Euro and Canadian leftist sign up for austerity for the masses and coddling the rich, sometimes the world seems so crazy and dreamlike and upsidedown it’s like a spell has been cast to cause so much coordinated and blatant stupidity. - KZK PERMALINK
December 12, 2011
Plainly, Humainity will go extinct in the next 50 years. There will be a hundred Fukishimas, particularly if collapse & war hit.
See some of the absolutely blithering stupidity of what’s going on in Japan here:
http://fukushima-diary.com/
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